2010 February archive at Being Frank

Archive for February, 2010

Feb

Anti-abortion doctors challenge guidelines

By eyeWitness 1 Comment

Categories: Being Frank...

A group of anti-abortion doctors has filed an application in the High Court at Auckland challenging new Medical Council guidelines on how physicians with personal objections to abortion must deal with patients. It is impressive that people are actually taking the time and effort to make a stand on these issues. It seems we, as a society, are moving more and more toward an attitude that abortion is just another form of contraception.

The application is for a judicial review of the “Beliefs and Medical Practice” guidelines. Their main objection is understood to involve a new section in the guidelines covering the way doctors who object to abortion must deal with patients. It requires them to tell patients having doubts about a pregnancy that abortion is one of the options. The statement was intended to guide medical practitioners, and tried to balance doctors’ and patients’ rights – including the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – and the entitlement to care and treatment.

The thing that bugs me about decisions like this is that many doctors and people in healthcare positions of authority so obviously take the view that they are accommodating an irrational minority, but really all sane people have no problem with abortion. The mere statement that “doctors should set aside their own beliefs where necessary and that they must make the care of the patient their first concern.” is a very opinionated statement because it implies that aborting their baby may be in a person’s best interests – which could never be the opinion or advice of a doctor who knows the sort of depression and heartache people go through after they abort a baby, and much less in the interests of the other human being the doctor is looking after – the baby.

I have a few friends who are doctors and they generally find it too difficult to practice or specialise in areas of women’s health because of their beliefs. They are even apparently sometimes labelled unhelpful or even lazy by others within the hospital if they refuse to help with referrals for abortion or prescribing contraception.

The law already allows doctors to refuse to provide contraception or abortion services on grounds of conscience, although they must tell patients they can consult another physician. The draft guidelines say that regardless of their personal beliefs, doctors must ensure a pregnant woman having doubts about her pregnancy is told abortion is among the options available to her, and is given information on it and the other options.

Apparently the proposed guideline is this:

CCID: 27436
PROPOSED MEDICAL COUNCIL GUIDELINE

“While the council recognises that you are entitled to hold your own beliefs, it remains your responsibility to ensure that a pregnant woman who comes to you for medical care and expresses doubt about continuing with the pregnancy is provided with or is offered access to objective information or assistance to enable her to make informed decisions on all available options for her pregnancy, including termination.”

The more we normalise it for ourselves, the more it will become just that: normal. We don’t want to end up like China do we where girls lives are disregarded as lives worth nothing and often aborted or deprived of the necessities of life once born?? – because that’s the direction in which a lack of regard for life heads…

In a 2002 survey conducted in a central China village, more than 300 of the 820 women had abortions and more than a third of them admitted they were trying to select their baby’s sex.
According to a report by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the vast majority of aborted fetuses, more than 70 percent, were female, citing the abortion of up to 750,000 female fetuses in China in 1999. Scary!

Feb

The Primacy of Family

By On the Road 1 Comment

Categories: Being Frank...

It is interesting to see how much depends on parents. More and more, we are understanding how the choices parents make drastically influence the way the children develop. Generous parents often make for generous children. Selfish parents cause a whole lot of problems for their children. Children who grow up watching their parents arguing certainly does not help them mature in their ability to deal with conflict.

While the mother obviously has significant influence, the father’s absence has major effects:

The president of the Council for the Family cited statistics from the U.S., which he said illustrate a trend in many parts of the Western world. Ninety percent of homeless people, 72 percent of adolescent suicides, 60 percent of rapists and 85 percent of youth in jail grew up without a father present, he said.

To all those fathers (and mothers) who put career or other concerns before your family: remember, your children are a gift from God. It is your responsibility to raise them, show them what true generosity and love really are. In the end, you will have to give an account for your actions.

While I am not a parent (yet), and I know others on here are far wiser than me on parenting, I hope to instill these values now, to start practicing putting my family (wife) first, always. There is no other model that compares to the domestic Church for raising a family, and the Catholic Church has taught this for about 2000 years.

So, to all you fathers….. what are you doing with your kids today? Hope you are not on here, wasting away a beautiful Saturday on the internet. Your kids need you, seriously.

Feb

‘You have entered “power drive”. Now, push seven eight seven to swing.’

By Methuselah's Beard 8 Comments

Categories: Being Frank...

Despite being a long way from my teenage years, I have to unashamedly admit that I really enjoy playing computer games. I can even remember the first game I played when I was about 5 or 6. It was called ‘Lode Runner’ and all it involved was 3 colours and a couple of blocky looking people and blocky looking blocks. From there I graduated to an Atari console and more blocks but in glorious colours, all 4 or 5 of them.

I started enjoying history through ‘Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego’, and learnt that Timbuktu was an actual place thanks to ‘Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego’. My enjoyment of North American sports was fostered by classics such as Brett Hull Hockey and NHL 2000, and the mysteries of American Football were unravelled by various versions of Madden. Flying an X-Wing or TIE Fighter never made me airsick and Formula 1 racing was actually exciting for me while riding with Carlos Sanchez. I have taken out my teenage angst on others in Team Fotress Classic and made sure the lights were on and the sound down low for Doom 3.

Computer games never have to make sense – why is a blocky mono-coloured pig bursting out of the ground on a golf course? Who cares! I’ve learnt a lot about obscure football clubs and their players thanks to Football Manager. I’ve been able to immerse myself in the Star Wars universe through KOTOR 1 and 2, been an elf in Oblivion, see the post-apocolyptic world in Fallout 3, and defend earth numerous times against aliens, zombies, and alien zombies. While my colleagues complain about how hard it is to stare at a computer screen all day, I take it in my stride thanks to hours of waiting for my darned Sim to do something useful. Imagine a world where wars are fought virtually instead of physically.

Games offer you a chance to forgot about the worries and stresses of the real world. Instead, worry and stress about how you’re going to get the sweater to fit the hamster. Sure in times of stress and you always turn to God first, but you need a break from that too sometimes. Some people turn their noses up at gamers, and some even label gamers as overweight, short-sighted, pale loners who live in their parents’ basement. But I’ve never really lived in the basement.

I’ve played a lot of games and I still do play games although not in as vast quantities as I used to. Especially this Lent where I’ve given up the gaming… it’s going to be a long one but that’s what Lent is about isn’t it. Besides, I’m sure Lent doesn’t count on Sundays.

Feb

How Refreshing!

By Filia Day Closed

Categories: Being Frank...

Because of my job, I’m privy to quite a bit of information concerning what is being taught in the medical curriculum. A lot of the time I see (at a grassroots level) what lecturers actually teach about medical ethics – what research they choose to leave in AND what they choose to leave out. I’ve always found it so bizarre that we feel, as a generation, that topics such as contraception are no longer controversial, even from a health perspective. They’ve just become a part of modern living – most of the time debate is relegated to Christian/Catholic circles, and that’s a real shame considering we don’t actually know a lot about some of these hormone altering drugs. I remember seeing an article in the New York Times a while back, which was particularly refreshing as it took as its matter a group of “naturalists” who had stopped using contraception. Good on them! I wouldn’t touch the stuff with a barge pole either for precisely that reason (numbered amoung many reasons though)! In the past, I’ve gone to the doctors and because of a number of health issues; they’ve really pushed for me to go on the pill. I’ve refused, done my homework and found other natural ways of dealing with my health problems. And, by in large, I’ve been reasonably successful. Besides my moral objections to contraceptive methods, I’m pretty strong on feminist narratives rejecting contraceptive use as well (I suppose that’s moral. But I’m sure you know what I mean.)

Equally refreshing: I happened to see one educator refer to this article in their course materials, and, from what I could see, she did so with a reasonably open mind. This woman (in the article) is a real saint and I have to admit I did shed a tear or too reading it. Having looked after her disabled son for many years, she states a case for why Euthanasia, under no circumstances should be introduced into Britain or anywhere else. Go have a read, her experiences gives a real insist into what it is like to be a carer of a disabled child/adult.

Feb

Spot the Franciscan Missionary…

By Tuppence 3 Comments

Categories: Being Frank...

If there’s one thing you really come to appreciate in the Congo, it’s the rare chances for a little bit of peace and quiet and coolness. Even Mass can often be such a big affair that you walk out feeling more exhausted than when you walked in…especially if it’s in the heat of the day.

So I was seriously delighted when I spotted a Franciscan Missionary of Mary outside after Mass last Sunday. The FMMs are in some of the most obscure corners of the world, like Australia for example, and Kenya, and Senegal, and now I’ve found them too in the DR Congo. Of course built on the Franciscan spirituality, their charism as far as I’ve observed and shared in their community life is one grounded in prayer and overflowing in apostolic works of all sorts.

Here it would be easy to get caught up in action, in wanting to keep fixing/saving/helping/relieving those around you. Prayer and contemplation, meditation and reflection, peace and quiet…liturgy, worship, the Eucharist can seem like peripheral activities if they’re not considered the source and summit, indeed the ‘synthesis’ of the very active apostolic life that most religious here are called to.

And this has what I’ve been struck by in my experiences hanging out with the FMMs…a life centred around the Eucharist, with daily adoration to boot, working in the hospitals, the schools, the refuge centres, the slums, the orphanages and elsewhere that the need is great. It’s a wonderful way to start the day to pop up to the sister’s chapel situated on the nearby hospital grounds for morning Mass and adoration afterwards until the vehicle arrives to take me home.

I only wish I’d bumped into Sr Suzanne the FMM after Mass three months ago, and not last weekend as I leave Kinshasa in less than a week, to resettle for some weeks Goma, right over on the eastern border between DRC and Rwanda. Of course I’ll be looking to get in touch with the FMM community over there. And I’d bet a beer that they are there too.

In fact, religious are one of the extraordinarily consistent presences in a place like the DRC, and in most parts of Africa I imagine. When NGO colleagues go into the field (Kinshasa is not the field, despite all appearances) I would guess about at least half the time they end up being hosted by sisters along the road. And when the drive is three days long, you’re grateful for a clean, tidy, peaceful, hospitable place to rest your head at the end of a long hot day.

Feb

Water boarding – no, not the fun kind you do on your summer holiday

By The Dumb Ox 180 Comments

Categories: Being Frank...

Hmmmm.

I came across this Catholic article yesterday, which I have to say, disappointed me quite a lot.

The article was written by prominent US Catholic commentator Austin Ruse.

Anyone who knows of Austin Ruse will know that he does some quite good work, particularly at the UN level, in promoting the Catholic pro-life and family cause.

Which is why I was quite astounded to read article in which he tries to justify the use of water boarding.

Water boarding is an “enhanced interrogation” (i.e. torture) technique that involves putting a cloth hood over the head, tipping the subject backwards and then pouring water over the face – the end result is an interrogation subject who suffers all of the effects of being drowned, without the actual drowning part (yes, it really is that bad).

Now I am really struggling to see how Ruse can suggest that water boarding is NOT an act of torture, and therefore it is an act permitted by Catholic moral teaching.

And I am also a little bit surprised to read this sort of commentary coming from this source.

To my way of thinking it seems very clear – water boarding is an act of torture, and if Ruse considers it morally permissible then I can’t see why he wouldn’t also logically consider whipping someone, or pulling out their finger nails with pliers to be just as morally acceptable.

After all, both of those acts could produce information that saves lots of lives from terrorist acts, and apart from some surface scaring, neither of them does any long term damage to the person being interrogated.

I’d be interested to know what others think.

ADVANCED WARNING: This thread is NOT about previous periods in history where certain Church authorities used torture. That topic has been done to death on BF, so any comment posts about the subject of torture in relation to Church history will definitely be deleted from this thread.

Also, I don’t want to hear any ad hominem attacks about Austin Ruse’s political views, so keep the debate on the topic of the morality of water boarding, and on the arguments that Ruse puts forward in support of his position – anything else will be deleted.

Feb

What if we just said wait?

By James the Least 15 Comments

Categories: Being Frank...

Actually, I’m not going to continue the debate from Ox’s post last week (on those who are signing a petition against the coming changes in the liturgy to fix mistranslations from the original Latin) – I’m just stealing the title of their petition to talk about sex.

A new study was released a couple of weeks ago that is causing a bit of a raucous amongst people on both sides of the…what would you call it: wait/don’t wait argument? The peer-reviewed study was published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (a cracking good read?) which is apparently no fly-by-night medicine journal. What it detailed was a small study in which a group of 600+ inner-city school children in the U.S. were provided a variety of sex-ed classes – ranging from emphasis on abstinence and waiting until “later”, to traditional “safer sex” education.

(Before I get lambasted for using scare quotes around “safer sex”, let me state the fact that sex with contraception is not “safe” in terms of avoiding STIs and unwanted pregnancy – it can be seen as “safer” [in this context] by some, but it is not absolutely safe. Moving on.)

Anyway, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, the crux of the study is that more of those who attended the abstinence-focused course claimed to have not had sex at the end of the two year study than those who attended the other types.

Good for them!

But I, for one, am confused as to why this is causing such a stir? Is there some switch that gets flipped when we reach adulthood (whenever that is?) that we suddenly forget that teenagers aren’t completely clueless morons? It’s like one day we’re 16 and trying to show our teachers and parents that we have a clue, and the next day we’re 36 and writing opinionated articles in newspapers (or, worse, high school curricula) about how teenagers are little more than horny little monkeys that are physically incapable of keeping their hands off each other!

So what was so shocking about this campaign? Was it that abstinence can make sense even when not provided in a moralistic context? In the case of this study, no mention was made of “God” or “sin” or even “waiting for marriage”. Instead, the pupils were asked to come up with a list of pros and cons for both having sex now, and waiting until later.

When these young teenagers drew up the lists, it seems the majority of them saw that the benefits of waiting outweighed the costs of not waiting. Huh. Who would have thunk it?

(As an interesting aside, apparently the ones who decided to go and have sex anyway were no less likely to use condoms, so there goes that whole argument about not “equipping” them with the “life skills” they need. I’m loving the quote button today. )

Anyway, I thought I’d bring this study to your attention, for your information. Also because it kinda justifies exactly what I’ve been saying – waiting to have sex until you are married to the person you love until death do you part is not impossible, quaint, or silly: it’s just smart.

Even teenagers can see that.